'When you hear hoofbeats, think of horses not zebras' - the old adage is well-known to GPs but what should you do when faced with a zebra, not a horse? Consultant cardiologist Professor Robert Tulloh and GP Dr Louise Tulloh kick off our new series with their advice on how to catch Kawasaki disease in general practice.

Almost half of practices forced to turn away patients in one area

More than 40% of practices in Lothian are restricting access to new patients in some form, figures confirmed by the health board show.

Of 122 practices Edinburgh and the surrounding area, 51 practices – or 42% - have imposed some sort of limit on new patients, including include only registering a certain number of new patients per week, or restricting registration only to patients moving into the area.

The figure has risen from a year ago when 34% of practices had restrictions on their patient lists.

Six months before that the figure was 30% - suggesting practices are increasingly feeling the pressure of recruitment and workload difficulties.

NHS Lothian said all but one of the practices it runs already had restrictions on lists before they took over.

Readers' comments (2)

The new contract better be good. If it fails to deliver as the GPFV in England then the Scottish Goverment will have to accept digging deeper into their pockets for a free NHS service for all. There has been a severe underestimation of the value for money GP services provide both north and south of the border. You will all miss us when we are gone.

Risk is that any new money will get swallowed by by debt ridden IJBs and never make it to the frontline. Also north of the border I do worry that we havent even begun to factor in the big demographic shift going on and still are too focused (albeit for good reason) on depivation. Elderly issues are rapidly growing in volume and complexity and will overwhelm the service unless addressed properly.